The Story Behind Music Of Streets

July 25, 1993|By Mary Schmich.

Anybody who plays a musical instrument knows that in this frantic, fickle world an instrument can be a therapist, a tranquilizer and a best friend. Not too many people know that quite the way Melvin Golden does.

Golden is a street musician, member of an itinerant breed of performers who play harmony with the honk, screech and rumble of the boulevards.

On warm, sunny days, they are stationed up and down the Michigan Avenue sidewalks, playing "Misty" and more "Misty" and too much "Satin Doll."

But Friday threatened thunderstorms, and at noon Melvin Golden was the only musician for a mile, standing outside the Walgreen's on the corner of Chicago Avenue. He had 30 cents and a bus token in the pocket of his jeans. He had risked the rain in the hopes that his soprano sax would buy him supper.

"I'm new to playing in the streets," he said. He was gentle and well-spoken. "So I'm apprehensive. But people are good-natured even in these hard times."

The saxophone was gold, the kind of gold plating so thin and cheap that water might dissolve it.

"I got it at a pawn shop," he said. "Hundred thirty-six dollars."

His playing was plaintive, more riffs than tunes, not remarkable but better than a lot of what passes for music on the streets and not bad at all for a man who taught himself.

On a good day, for six hours, he'll make $20. I was curious why a fit young man didn't look for better-paying work. Jobs are hard to find, he said. I pressed.

"Some down things happened in my life."

"Like what?"

He looked away then looked back with a level gaze. "I've been in prison."

Decorum tells you that when a stranger tells you he's been in prison, you don't instantly say "For what?" any more than on a first encounter you ask someone, "How much do you weigh?"

So we talked a while longer.

Golden grew up on the West Side with his mother and six siblings, surrounded by blues and jazz but too poor to buy an instrument. In prison, he decided he wanted to learn to play. A fellow inmate gave him a flute. Another gave him an old tenor saxophone.

He practiced hard. The other inmates did not applaud.

"Shut up!" they'd yell. At least that's what the polite ones said.

"You're sitting here playing dominoes, gang-banging," he'd respond. "Why don't you learn to do something so that when you get out you can stay out?"

After we'd talked for a few more minutes, it seemed not too rude to ask. "So how long were you in prison?"

He looked maybe 30 years old.

"Twenty-five years," he said.

"What for?"

He paused but didn't look away. "Murder."

He was 19. A gang of young men. A robbery. A shooting. "We were young and wild and stupid."

And so he would spend his prime years, a third of the average man's life, in prison. Pontiac, Dixon, other lockups on the Illinois circuit.

Jealousy runs strong in prison, he said, and not much of anybody, not the guards or the other inmates, want you to get good at anything. Still, he kept plugging away at the saxophone.

Five weeks ago, when he was released-a 44-year-old man who had gone to prison before the dawn of the computer age-he resolved that the saxophone would keep him free.

"The sax gives me something to focus on," he said. "People ask me, `What are you?' I say, `I'm a musician."' Ask a lot of guys who've been in prison, `What are you?', they go blank. They're not lawyers, they're not doctors. A lot of guys embrace that. They think, `I'm not nothing, I might as well act accordingly.' "

He's played the open-mike nights at a couple of blues clubs. He seems to take astonished pleasure that anyone would listen to him, much less applaud.

"I dream of owning a Selmer sax," he says. "The keys adjust to your hands. The action is precise. The sound is large and warm. I would love a black one or a red one."

He shrugs. "But I don't want it all now, I don't want it all fast. Look, this is great, just being able to eat what you want, use the washroom when you want. I chose the right side. I plan to stay here."